While I sympathize with your sentiment, we need to accept that running a medical practice or a healthcare facility is expensive and comes with earnings handicaps that most other businesses don’t have. And like it or not, medical practices of any type or size are business.
When cost of doing business increases, most normal businesses have the option to adjust prices of goods and services passing the increase cost to the customers or absorb them if it makes financial sense. Most medical businesses have little control over the amount of money they can make from goods and services; reimbursement rates are governed by a contractual agreement where prices are negotiated in advance between the business and Medicare or the insurance provider. After the contract is agreed upon, reimbursement rates can’t be arbitrarily adjusted in response to rising costs.
For the individual medical office, the insurance companies have a great amount of power in setting the reimbursement levels for services provided.
If the reimbursement fails to keep up with rising business costs, the only way left for that provider to maintain the business in the black is increase the number of encounters per day since pricing per encounter lacks any flexibility. Invariably this ends up eroding the patient experience and, in my opinion, decreasing the overall quality of care.
Your discontent is real and your feelings are valid. However the problems with healthcare are more complex, with multiple causes, culprits and victims. To make things worse, usually there is no single culprit or victim here, when you look deep enough everybody is a little of each.
I'm finding that quality is no longer the norm in the medical field in general. It's all about getting paid. Great article though
While I sympathize with your sentiment, we need to accept that running a medical practice or a healthcare facility is expensive and comes with earnings handicaps that most other businesses don’t have. And like it or not, medical practices of any type or size are business.
When cost of doing business increases, most normal businesses have the option to adjust prices of goods and services passing the increase cost to the customers or absorb them if it makes financial sense. Most medical businesses have little control over the amount of money they can make from goods and services; reimbursement rates are governed by a contractual agreement where prices are negotiated in advance between the business and Medicare or the insurance provider. After the contract is agreed upon, reimbursement rates can’t be arbitrarily adjusted in response to rising costs.
For the individual medical office, the insurance companies have a great amount of power in setting the reimbursement levels for services provided.
If the reimbursement fails to keep up with rising business costs, the only way left for that provider to maintain the business in the black is increase the number of encounters per day since pricing per encounter lacks any flexibility. Invariably this ends up eroding the patient experience and, in my opinion, decreasing the overall quality of care.
Your discontent is real and your feelings are valid. However the problems with healthcare are more complex, with multiple causes, culprits and victims. To make things worse, usually there is no single culprit or victim here, when you look deep enough everybody is a little of each.